PR 

4oaa 

.57 




^-iVf^ ^ 







nolo ( X. 




IS30 



■■V 



Booklets in !(ew & Fancy Bindings, 



A SERIES of short, practical, and interesting voi- 
umes, daintily bound, and intended to fill the 
wants of those desiring inexpensive booklets of real 
value for gift purposes. Price, 35c. per volume. 

BLESSING OF CHEERFULNESS (THE). By the 

Rev. J. R. Miller, D.D. 
CHILDREN'S WING (THE). Bv Elizabeth Glover. 
CONFLICTING DUTIES. By E. S. Elliott. 
DO WE BELIEVE IT? By E. S. Elliott. 
EXPECTATION CORNER. By E. S. Elliott. 
FAMILY MANNERS. By author of "Talks about a Fine 

Art," etc. 
GIRLS : FAULTS AND IDEALS. By the Rev. J. R. 

Miller, D.D. 
JESSICA'S FIRST PRAYER. B,v Hcsba Stretton. 
XING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER (THE). By John 

Ruikin. 
LADDIE. Bv the author of " Miss Toosey's Mission." 
LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. By Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
MASTER AND MAN. By Count Lyof N. Tolstoi. 
MISS TOOSEY'S MISSION. Bv the author of "Laddie." 
REAL HAPPENINGS. Bv Mrs. Marv B. Claflin. 
SECRETS OF HAPPY HOME LIFE. By the Rev. J. 

R. Mill-M-, ]).]). 
STILLNESS AND SERVICE. By E. S. EUiott. 
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. By Matthew Arnold. 
TALKS ABOUT A FINE ART. Bv Elizabeth Glover. 
TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE. l]v E. S. Elliott. 
TWO PILGRIMS (THE). Bv Count Lyof N. Tolstoi. 
VICTORY OF OUR FAITH' (THE). By Anna Robert- 
son llrown, Pii.D. 
WHAT IS WORTH W^HILE. By Anna Robertson 

Brown, rii.l). 
WHAT MEN LIVE BY. Bv Count Lvof N. Tolstoi. 
WHEN THE KING COMES TO HIS O'vVN. By 

E. S. Elliott. 
WHERE LOVE IS, THERE GOD IS ALSO. By 

Count Lvof N. Tolstoi. 
YOUNG MEN : FAULTS AND IDEALS. By the Rev. 

J. R. Miller, D.D. 



For sale by all booksellers, or sent, postpaid, by the 
■ publistiers, on receipt of price. 



Thomas Y.Crowell & Co., NewYork & Boston. 



Sweetness and Light 



BY 

MATTHEW ARNOLD 



New York : 46 East Fourteenth Street 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY 

Boston : 100 Purchase Street 






Transfer 
Army and 
March 3,1931 



Manyaitf) 



INTEODUCTION. 



In one of his speeches a short time ago, that fine 
speaker and famous Liberal, Mr. Bright, took occasion 
to have a fling at the friends and preacliers of culture. 
^' People Avho talk about what they call culture ! " said 
he contemptuously j " by which they mean a smattering 
of the two dead languages of Greek and Latin." And 
he went on to remark, in a strain with which modern 
speakers and writers Jiavj* made us very familiar, how 
poor a thing this culture is, how little good it can do the 
world, and how absurd it is for its possessors to set 
much store by it. And the other day a younger Liberal 
than Mr. Bright, one of a school whose mission it is to 
bring into order and system that body of truth with 
which the earlier Liberals merely fumbled, a member of 
the University of Oxford, and a very clever writer, 
Mr. Frederic Harrison, developed, in the systematic and 
stringent manner of his school, the thesis which Mr. 
Bright had propounded in only general terms. "Per- 
haps the very silliest cant of the day," said Mr. Frederic 
Harrison, "is the cant about culture. Culture is a 

3 



4 INTRODUCTION. 

desirable quality in a critic of new books, and sits well 
on a possessor o£ belles-lettres ; but as applied to politics, 
it means simply a turn for small fault-finding, love of 
selfisli ease, and indecision in action. The man of cul- 
ture is in politics one of the poorest mortals alive. For 
simple pedantry and v\ra.nt of good sense no man is his 
equal. No assumption is too unreal, no end is too un- 
practical for him. But the active exercise of politics 
requires common-sense, sympathy, trust, resolution, and 
enthusiasm, qualities which your man of culture has 
carefully rooted up, lest they damage the delicacy of his 
critical olfactories. Perhaps they are the only class of 
responsible beings in the community who cannot with 
safety be intrusted with power." 

^ow, for my part, I do not wish to see men of culture 
asking to be intrusted with power ; and, indeed, I have 
freely said, that in my opinion the speech most proper, 
at present, for a man of culture to make to a body of his 
fellow-countrymen who get him into a committee-room, 
is Socrates' Knoiv thyself! and this is not a speech to 
be made by men wanting to be intrusted with power. 
For this very indifference to direct political action I have 
been taken to task by the Dally Telegraph, coupled, by 
a strange perversity of fate, with just that very one of 
the Hebrew prophets whose style I admire the least, and 
called '^ an elegant Jeremiah." It is because I say (to 
use the words which the Daily Telegra'ph puts in my 



INTB OD UCTION. 5 

moiitli) : " You miistii't make a fuss because you have 
no vote, — that is vulgarity ; you mustn't hold big 
meetings to agitate for reform bills and to repeal corn 
laws, — that is the very height of vulgarity," — it is for 
this reason that I am called sometimes an elegant Jere- 
miah, sometimes a spurious Jeremiah, a Jeremiah about 
the reality of whose mission the writer in the Bail >j 
Telegraph has his doubts. It is evident, therefore, that 
I have so taken my line as not to be exposed to the 
whole brunt of Mr. Frederic Harrison's censure. Still, 
I have often spoken in praise of culture, I have striven 
to make all my works and ways serve the interests of 
culture. I take culture to be something a great deal 
more than what Mr. Frederic Harrison and others call 
it : "a desirable quality in a critic of new books." Nay, 
even though to a certain extent I am disposed to agree 
with Mr. Frederic Harrison, that men of culture are just 
the class of responsible beings in this community of ours 
who cannot properly, at present, be intrusted with 
power, I am not sure that I do not think this the fault 
of our community rather than of the men of culture. 
In short, although like Mr. Bright, and Mr. Frederic 
Harrison, and the editor of the Daily Telegraph, and a 
large body of valued friends of mine, I am a Liberal, 
yet I am a Liberal tempered by experience, reflection, 
and renouncement, and I am, above all, a believer in 
culture. Therefore I propose now to try and inquire, 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

in the simple unsystematic way wliich best suits both 
my taste and my powers, what culture really is, what 
good it can do, what is our own special need of it ; and 
I shall seek to find some plain grounds on which a faith 
in culture — both my own faith in it and the faith of 
others — may rest securely. 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 



BY MATTHEW ARNOLD. 



The disparagers of culture make its motive curiosity ; 
sometimes, indeed, they make its motive mere exclusive- 
ness and vanity. The culture which is supposed to 
plume itself on a smattering of Greek and Latin is a 
culture which is begotten by nothing so intellectual as 
curiosity ; it is valued either out of sheer vanity and 
ignorance, or else as an engine of social and class dis- 
tinction, separating its holder, like a badge or title, from 
other people who have not got it. No serious man 
would call this mdtuve^ or attach any value to it, as cul- 
ture, at all. To find the real ground for the very differ- 
ent estimate which serious people will set upon culture, 
we must find some motive for culture in the terms of 
which may lie a real ambiguity ; and such a motive the 
Word curiosity gives us. 

I have before now pointed out that we English do not, 
like the foreigners, use this word in a good sense as well 
as in a bad sense. With us the word is always used in 
a somewhat disapproving sense. A liberal and intelli- 

7 



8 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

gent eagerness about the things of the mind may be 
meant by a foreigner when he speaks of curiosity, but 
with us the word always conveys a certain notion of 
frivolous and unedifying activity. In the Quarterly 
Revieiv, some little time ago, was an estimate of the cel- 
ebrated French critic, M. Sainte-Beuve, and a very in- 
adequate estimate it in my judgment was. And its 
inadequacy consisted chiefly in this : that in our English 
way it left out of sight the double sense really involved 
in the word curiosity, thinking enough was said to stamp 
M. Sainte-Beuve with blame if it was said that he was 
impelled in his operations as a critic by curiosity, and 
omitting either to perceive that M. Sainte-Beuve himself, 
and many other people with him, would consider that 
this was praiseworthy and not blameworthy, or to point 
out Avhy it ought really to be accounted worthy of blame 
and not of praise. For as there is a curiosity about in- 
tellectual matters which is futile, and merely a disease, so 
there is certainly a curiosity — a desire after the things 
of the mind simply for their oAvn sa.kes and for the 
pleasure of seeing them as they are — which is, in an 
intelligent being, natural and laudable. Nay, and the 
very desire to see things as they a.re implies a balance 
and regulation of mind which is not often attained with- 
out fruitful effort, and which is the very opposite of the 
blind and diseased impulse of mind which is Avhat we 
mean to blame when we blame curiosity. Montesquieu 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 9 

says : " The first motive whicli ought to impel us to 
study is the desire to augment the excellence of our 
nature, and to render an intelligent being yet more in- 
telligent." This is the true ground to assign for the 
genuine scientific passion, however manifested, and for 
culture, viewed simply as a fruit of this passion ; and it 
is a worthy ground, even though we let the term curios- 
it?/ stand to describe it. 

But there is of culture another view, in which not 
solely the scientific passion, the sheer desire to see 
things as they are, natural and proper in an intelligent 
being, appears as the ground of it. There is a view in 
which all the love of our neighbor, the impulses towards 
action, help, and beneficence, the desire for removing 
human error, clearing human confusion, and diminishing 
human misery, the noble aspiration to leave the world 
better and happier than we found it, — motives emi- 
nently such as are called social, — come in as part of 
the grounds of culture, and the main and pre-eminent 
part. Culture is then properly described not as having 
its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the 
love of perfection ; it is a stud?/ of 2:>erfecfio7i. It moves 
by the force, not merely or primarily of the scientific 
passion for pure knowledge, but also of the moral and 
social passion for doing good. As, in the first view of 
it, we took for its worthy motto Montesquieu's words: 
" To render an intelligent being yet more intelligent ! " 



10 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

SO, in the second view of it, tliere is no better motto 
wMcli it can have than these words of Bishop Wilson : 
" To make reason and the will of God prevail ! '' 

Only, whereas the passion for doing good is apt to be 
over hasty in determining what reason and the will of 
God say, because its turn is for acting rather than think- 
ing, and it wants to be beginning to act; and whereas 
it is apt to take its own conceptions, which proceed 
from its own state of development, and share in all the 
imperfections and immaturities of this, for a basis of 
action. What distinguishes culture is, that it is pos- 
sessed by the scientific passion as well as by the passion 
of doing good ; that it demands worthy notions of rea- 
son and the will of God, and does not readily suffer its 
own crude conceptions to substitute themselves for them. 
And knowing that no action or institution can be salu- 
tary and stable which is not based on reason and the 
will of God, it is not so bent on acting and instituting, 
even with the great aim of diminishing human error 
and misery ever before its thoughts, but that it can re- 
member that acting and instituting are of little use, 
unless we know how and what we ought to act and to 
institute. 

This culture is more interesting and more far-reaching 
than that other, which is founded solely on the scien- 
tific passion for knowing. But it needs times of faith 
and ardor, times when the intellectual horizon is open- 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 11 

iiig and widening all round us, to flourish in. And is 
not tlie close and bounded intellectual horizon within 
which we have long lived and moved now lifting up, 
and are not new lights finding free passage to shine in 
upon us ? For a long time there was no passage for 
them to make their way in upon us, and then it was of 
no use to think of adapting the world's action to them. 
Where was the hope of making reason and the will of 
God prevail among people who had a routine which 
they had christened reason and the will of God, in 
which they were inextricably bound, and bej^ond which 
they had no power of looking ? But now the iron force 
of adhesion to the old routine — social, political, reli- 
gious — has wonderfully yielded ; the iron force of ex- 
clusion of all which is new has wonderfully yielded. 
The danger now is, not that people should obstinately 
refuse to allow anything but their old routine to pass 
for reason and the will of God, but either that they 
should allow some novelty or other to pass for these too 
easily, or else that they should underrate the importance 
of them altogether, and think it enough to follow action 
for its own sake, without troubling themselves to make 
reason and the will of God prevail therein. Now, then, 
is the moment for culture to be of service, culture which 
believes in making reason and the will of God prevail, 
believes in perfection, is- the study and pursuit of per- 
fection, and is no longer debarred, by a rigid invincible 



12 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

exclusion of whatever is new, from getting acceptance 
for its ideaS; simply because they are new. 

The moment this view of culture is seized, the mo- 
ment it is regarded not solely as the endeavor to see 
things as they are, to draw towards a knowledge of the 
universal order which seems to be intended and aimed 
at in the world, and which it is a man's happiness to go 
along with or his misery to go counter to, — to learn, 
in short, the will of God, — the moment, I say, culture 
is considered, not merely as the endeavor to see and learn 
this, but as the endeavor, also, to make it jirevail, the 
moral, social, and beneficent character of culture becomes 
manifest. The mere endeavor to see and learn the 
truth for our own personal satisfaction is indeed a com- 
mencement for making it prevail, a j)i'eparing the way 
for this, which always serves this, and is Avrongly, there- 
fore, stamped with blame absolutely in itself, and not 
only in its caricature and degeneration. But perhaps 
it has got stamped with blame, and disparaged with the 
dubious title of curiosity, because in comparison with 
this wider endeavor of such great and plain utility it 
looks selfish, petty, and unprofitable. 

And religion, the greatest and most important of the 
efforts by Avhich the human race has manifested its 
impulse to perfect itself, — religion, that voice of the 
deepest human experience, — does not only enjoin and 
sanction the aim which is the great aim of culture, the 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 13 

aim of setting ourselves to ascertain wliat perfection is 
and to make it prevail ; but also, in determining gener^ 
ally in what human perfection consists, religion comes 
to a conclusion identical with that which culture — cul- 
ture seeking the determination of this question through 
all the voices of human experience which have been 
heard upon it, of art, science, poetry, philosophy, history, 
as well as of religion, in order to give a greater fulness 
and certainty to its solution — likewise reaches. Eeli- 
gion says : The idngdom of God is within you ; and 
culture, in like manner, places human perfection in an 
internal condition, in the growth and predominance of 
our humanity proper, as distinguished from our ani- 
mality. It x:)laces it in the ever-increasing efficacy and 
in the general harmonious expansion of those gifts of 
thought and feeling which make the peculiar dignity, 
Avealth, and happiness of human nature. As I have said 
on a former occasion : " It is in making endless additions 
to self, in the endless expansion of its powers, in endless 
growth in wisdom and beauty, that the spirit of the 
human race finds its ideal. To reach this ideal, culture 
is an indispensable aid, and that is the true value of 
culture." Not a having and a resting, but a growing 
and a becoming, is the character of perfection as culture 
conceives it ; and here, too, it coincides with religion. 

And because men are all members of one great whole, 
and the sympathy v.hich is in human nature will not 



14 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

allow one member to be indifferent to the rest, or to 
have a perfect welfare independent of the rest, the ex- 
pansion of our humanity, to suit the idea of perfection 
which culture forms, must be a general expansion. Per- 
fection, as culture conceives it, is not x^ossible while the 
individual remains isolated. The individual is required, 
under pain of being stunted and enfeebled in his own 
development if he disobeys, to carry others along with 
him in his march towards perfection, to be continually 
doing all he can to enlarge and increase the volume of 
the human stream sweeping thitherward. And here, 
once more, culture lays on us the same obligation as 
religion, which says, as Bishop Wilson has admirably 
put it, that "to promote the kingdom of God is to in- 
crease and hasten one's own happiness." 

But, finally, perfection — as culture from a thoroughly 
disinterested study of human nature and human experi- 
ence learns to conceive it — is a harmonious expansion 
of all the powers which make the beauty and worth of 
human nature, and is not consistent with the over-devel- 
opment of any one power at the expense of the rest. 
Here culture goes beyond religion, as religion is gener- 
ally conceived by us. 

If culture, then, is a study of perfection, and of har- 
monious perfection, general perfection, and perfection 
which consists in becoming something rather than in 
having something, in an inward condition of the mind 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 15 

and spirit, not in an outward set of circumstances, — it 
is clear that culture, instead of being the frivolous and 
useless thing which Mr. Bright and Mr. Frederic Harri- 
son, and many other Liberals, are apt to call it, has a very 
important function to fulfil for mankind. And this func- 
tion is particularly important in our modern world, of 
which the whole civilization is, to a much greater degree 
than the civilization of Greece and Eome, mechanical 
and external, and tends constantly to become more so. 
But above all in our own country has culture a weighty 
part to perform, because here that mechanical character, 
Avhicli civilization tends to take everywhere, is shown in 
the most eminent degree. Indeed, nearly all the char- 
acters of perfection, as culture teaches us to fix them, 
meet in this country with some powerful tendency which 
thwarts them and sets them at defiance. The idea of per- 
fection as an imvard condition of the mind and spirit is 
at variance with the mechanical and material civilization 
in esteem with us, and nowhere, as I have said, so much 
in esteem as with us. The idea of perfection as a gen- 
eral expansion of the human family is at variance with 
our strong individualism, our hatred of all limits to the 
unrestrained swing of the individual's personality, our 
maxim of " every man for himself." Above all, the 
idea of perfection as a liarmonious expansion of human 
nature is at variance with our Avant of flexibility, with 
our inaptitude for seeing more than one side of a thing, 



16 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

with our intense, energetic absorption in the particular 
pursuit we happen to be following. So culture has a 
rough task to achieve in this country. Its preachers 
have, and are likely long to have, a hard time of it ; and 
they will much oftener be regarded, for a great while to 
come, as elegant or spurious Jeremiahs than as friends 
and benefactors. That, however, will not prevent their 
doing in the end good service if they persevere. And, 
meanwhile, the mode of action they have to pursue, and 
the sort of habits they must fight against, ought to be 
made quite clear for every one to see, who may be will- 
ing to look at the matter attentively and dispassion- 
ately. 

Faith in machinery is, I said, our besetting danger; 
often in machinery most absurdly disproportioned to 
the end which this machinery, if it is to do any good at 
all, is to serve ; but always in machinery, as if it had a 
value in and for itself. What is freedom but machin- 
ery ? what is population but machinery ? what is coal 
but machinery ? what are railroads but machinery ? 
what is wealth but machinery ? what are, even, reli- 
gious organizations but machinery ? Now, almost every 
voice in England is accustomed to speak of these things 
as if they were precious ends in themselves, and there- 
fore had some of the characters of perfection indisput- 
ably joined to them. I have before now noticed Mr. 
Boebuck's stock argument for proving the greatness and 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, 17 

happiness of England as she is, and for quite stopping 
the mouths of all gainsayers. Mr. lioebuck is never 
weary of reiterating this argument of his, so I do not 
know why I should be weary of noticing it. " May not 
every man in England say what he likes ? " Mr. Eoe- 
buck perpetually asks ; and that, he thinks, is quite 
sufficient, and when every man may say what he likes, 
our aspirations ought to be satisfied. But the aspira- 
tions of culture, Avhich is the study of perfection, are 
not satisfied, unless what men say, when they may say 
what they like, is worth saying — has good in it, and 
more good than bad. In the same way the Times y re- 
plying to some foreign strictures on the dress, looks, 
and behavior of the English abroad, urges that the 
English ideal is that every oue should be free to do and 
look just as he likes. But culture indefatigably tries, 
not to make what each raw person may like the rule by 
which he fashions himself, but to draw ever nearer to 
a sense of what is indeed beautiful, graceful, and be- 
coming, and to get the raw person to like that. 

And in the same way with respect to railroads and 
coal. Every one must have observed the strange lan- 
guage current during the late discussions as to the possi- 
ble failures of our supplies of coal. Our coal, thousands 
of people were saying, is the real basis of our national 
greatness 5 if our coal runs short, there is an end of the 
greatness of England. But what is greatness ? cul- 



18 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

ture makes us ask. Greatness is a spiritual condition 
worthy to excite love, interest, and admiration ; and the 
outward proof of possessing greatness is that we excite 
love, interest, and admiration. If England were swal- 
lowed up by the sea to-morrow, which of the two, a 
hundred years hence, would most excite the love, in- 
terest, and admiration of mankind, — would most, there- 
fore, show the evidences of having possessed greatness, 
— the England of the last twenty years, or the England 
of Elizabeth, of a time of splendid spiritual effort, but 
when our coal, and our industrial operations depending 
on coal, were very little developed ? Well, then, Avhat 
an unsound habit of mind it must be which makes us 
talk of things like coal or iron as constituting the great- 
ness of England, and how salutary a friend is culture, 
bent on seeing things as they are, and thus dissipating 
delusions of this kind and fixing standards of perfection 
that are real ! 

Wealth, again, that end to which our prodigious 
works for material advantage are directed, the com- 
monest of commonplaces tells us how men are apt to 
regard wealth as a precious end in itself ; and cert?anly 
they have never been so apt thus to regard it as they 
are in England at the present time. Never did people 
believe anything more firmly than nine Englishmen 
out of ten at the present day believe that our greatness 
and welfare are proved by our being so very rich. Now, 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 19 

the use of culture is that it helps us, by means of its 
spiritual standard of perfection, to regard wealth but as 
machinery, and not only to say as a matter of words 
that we regard wealth as but machinery, but really to 
perceive and feel that it is so. If it were not for this 
purging effect wrought upon our minds by culture, the 
whole world, the future as well as the present, would 
inevitably belong to the Philistines. The people who 
believe most that our greatness and welfare are x^roved 
by our being very rich, and who most give their lives 
and thoughts to becoming rich, are just the very people 
Avhom we call Philistines. Culture says : " Consider 
these people, then, their way of life, their habits, their 
manners, the very tones of their voice ; look at them 
attentively ; observe the literature they read, the things 
which give them pleasure, the words which come forth 
out of their mouths, the thoughts Avhich make the fur- 
niture of their minds ; would any amount of wealth be 
worth having with the condition that one was to become 
just like these people by having it?" And thus cul- 
ture begets a dissatisfaction which is of the highest 
possible value in stemming the common tide of men's 
thoughts in a wealthy and industrial commuuity, and 
which saves the future, as one may hope, from being 
vulgarized, even if it cannot save the present. 

Population, again, and bodily health and vigor, are 
things which are nowhere treated in such an unintelli- 



20 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

gent, misleading, exaggerated way as in England. Both 
are really machinery; yet how many people all around 
ns do we see rest in them and fail to look beyond them ! 
Why, one has heard pe-ople, fresh from reading certain 
articles of the Times on the Eegistrar-General's returns 
of marriages and births in this country, who would 
talk of our large English families in quite a solemn 
strain, as if they had something in itself beautiful, 
elevating, and meritorious in them; as if the British 
Philistine would only have to present himself before 
the Great Judge with his twelve children, in order to 
be received among the sheep as a matter of right ! 

But bodily health and vigor, it may be said, are not 
to be classed Avith wealth and population as mere ma- 
chinery; they have a more real and essential value. 
True ; but only as they are more intimately connected 
with a perfect s^^iritual condition than wealth or popula- 
tion are. The moment we disjoin them from a perfect 
spiritual condition, and pursue them, as we do pursue 
them, for their own sake, and as ends in themselves, 
our worship of them becomes as mere worship of ma- 
chinery, as our worshix) of wealth and population, and 
as unintelligent and vulgarizing a worship as that is. 
Every one, with anything like an adequate idea of hu- 
man perfection, has distinctly marked this subordina- 
tion to higher and spiritual ends of the cultivation 
of bodily vigor and activity. "Bodily exercise profit- 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 21 

eth little ; but godliness is profitable unto all things," 
says the author of the Epistle to Timothy. And the 
utilitarian Franklin says just as explicitly : " Eat and 
drink such an exact quantity as suits the constitution 
of thy body, m reference to the services of the mind.^^ 

But the point of view of culture, keeping the mark of 
human perfection simply and broadly in view, and not 
assigning to this perfection, as religion or utilitarianism 
assigns to it, a special and limited character, — this 
point of view, I say, of culture is best given by these 
words of Epictetus : '^ It is a sign of ac^ma," says he, — 
that is, of a nature not finely tempered, — ^^ to give your- 
self up to things which relate to the body; to make, 
for instance, a great fuss about exercise, a great fuss 
about eating, a great fuss about drinking, a great 
fuss about walking, a great fuss about riding. All 
these things ought to be done merely by the way ; the 
formation of the spirit and character must be our real 
concern." This is admirable ; and indeed, the Greek 
word evcfivta, a finely tempered nature, gives exactly the 
notion of perfection as culture brings us to conceive it; 
a harmonious perfection, a |)erfection in which the char- 
acters of beauty and intelligence are both present, 
which unites "the two noblest of things," — as Swift, 
who of one of the two, at any rate, had himself all too 
little, most happily calls them, in his "Battle of the 
Books," — " the two noblest of things, siveetness and 



22 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

light. ^^ The ev(fivy<s is tlie man who tends towards sweet- 
ness and light ; the a4>vy<;, on the other hand, is our 
Philistine. The immense spiritual significance of the 
Greeks is due to their having been inspired with this 
central and happy idea of the essential character of 
human perfection ; and Mr. Bright' s misconception of 
culture, as a smattering of Greek and Latin, comes 
itself, after all, from this wonderful significance of the 
Greeks having affected the very machinery of our edu- 
cation, and is in itself a kind of homage to it. 

In thus making sweetness and light to be characters 
of perfection, culture is of like spirit with poetry, fol- 
lows one law with poetry. Far more than on our 
freedom, our population, and our industrialism, many 
amongst us rely upon our religious organizations to 
save us. I have called religion a yet more important 
manifestation of human nature than poetry, because it 
has worked on a broader scale for perfection, and with 
greater masses of men. But the idea of beauty and of a 
human nature perfect on all its sides, which is the domi- 
nant idea of poetry, is a true and invaluable idea, though 
it has not yet had the success that the idea of conquer- 
ing the obvious faults of our animality, and of a human 
nature perfect on the moral side, — which is the domi- 
nant idea of religion, — has been enabled to have ; and 
it is destined, adding to itself the religious idea of a 
devout energy, to transform and govern the other. 



SWEETNESS AND LIOnT. 23 

The best art and poetry of the Greeks, in which reli- 
gion and poetry are one, in which the idea of beauty 
and of a human nature perfect on all sides adds to 
itself a religious and devout energy, and works in the 
strength of that, is on this account of such surpassing 
interest and instructiveness for us, though it was — as, 
having regard to the human race in general, and, indeed, 
having regard to the Greeks themselves, we must own 
— a premature attempt, an attempt which for success 
needed the moral and religious fibre in humanity to 
be more braced and developed than it had yet been. 
But Greece did not err in having the idea of beauty, 
harmony, and complete human perfection so present 
and paramount. It is impossible to have this idea 
too present and paramount ; only, the moral fibre must 
be braced too. And we, because we have braced the 
moral fibre, are not on that account in the right way, 
if at the same time the idea of beauty, harmony, and 
complete human perfection is wanting or misappre- 
hended amongst us ; and evidently it is wanting or 
misapprehended at present. And when we rely as we 
do on our religious organizations, which in themselves 
do not and cannot give us this idea, and think we have 
done enough if we make them spread and prevail, then, 
I say, we fall into our common fault of over-valuing 
machinery. 

Nothing is more common than for people to confound 



24 SWEETI{ESS AND LIGHT. 

the iuward peace and satisfaction wliicli follow the sub- 
duing of the obvious faults of our animality with what I 
may call absolute inward peace and satisfaction — the 
peace and satisfaction which are reached as we draw 
near to complete spiritual perfection, and not merely to 
moral perfection, or rather to relative moral perfection. 
No people in the world have done more and struggled 
more to attain this relative moral perfection than our 
English race has. For no peoi^le in the world has the 
command to I'esist the devil, to overcome the wicked one, 
in the nearest and most obvious sense of those words, 
had such a pressing force and reality. And we have 
had our reward, not only in the great worldly prosperity 
which our obedience to this command has brought us, 
but also, and far more, in great inward peace and satis- 
faction. But to me few things are more pathetic than 
to see people, on the strength of the inward peace and 
satisfaction which their rudimentary efforts towards 
perfection have brought them, employ, concerning their 
incomplete perfection and the religious organizations 
within which they have found it, language which prop- 
erly applies only to complete perfection, and is a far-off 
echo of the human soul's prophecy of it. Eeligion itself, 
I need hardl}^ say, supplies them in abundance with this 
grand language. And very freely do they use it ; 3- et it 
is really the severest possible criticism of such an in- 
complete perfection as alone we have yet reached through 
our religious organizations. 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 25 

The impulse of the English race towards moral 
development and self-conquest has nowhere so power- 
fully manifested itself as in Puritanism. Nowhere 
has Puritanism found so adequate an expression as in 
the religious organization of the Independents. The 
modern Independents have a newspaper, the Noncon- 
formist, written with great sincerity and ability. The 
motto, the standard, the profession of faith, which this 
organ of theirs carries aloft, is : " The Dissidence of 
Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant reli- 
gion." There is sweetness and light, and an ideal of 
complete harmonious human perfection ! One need 
not go to culture and poetry to find language to judge 
it. Religion, wdth its instinct for perfection, supplies 
language to judge it, language, too, which is in our 
mouths every day. " Finally, be of one mind, united 
in feeling," says St. Peter. There is an ideal wdiich 
judges the Puritan ideal : ^' The Dissidence of Dissent 
and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion ! " 
And religious organizations like this are what people 
believe in, rest in, and give their lives for ! Such, I 
say, is the wonderful virtue of even the beginnings of 
perfection, of having conquered even the plain faults 
of our animality, that the religious organization which 
has helped us to do it can seem to us something ]3re- 
cious, salutary, and to be propagated, even when it 
wears such a brand of imperfection on its forehead as 



26 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

tliis. And men have got such a habit of giving to the 
language of religion a si^ecial application, of making it 
a mere jargon, that for the condemnation which reli- 
gion itself passes on the shortcomings of their religious 
organizations they have no ear ; they are sure to cheat 
themselves and to explain this condemnation away. 
They can only be reached by the criticism which cul- 
ture, like poetry, speaking a language not to be sophis- 
ticated, and resolutely testing these organizations by 
the ideal of a human perfection complete on all sides, 
applies to them. 

But men of culture and poetry, it will be said, are 
again and again failing, and failing conspicuously, in the 
necessary first stage to a harmonious perfection, in the 
subduing of the great obvious faults of our animality, 
which it is the glory of these religious organizations 
to have helped us to subdue. True, they do often so 
fail. They have often been without the virtues as well 
as the faults of the Puritan ; it has been one of their 
dangers that they so felt the Puritan's faults that they 
too much neglected the practice of his virtues. I will 
not, however, exculpate them at the Puritan's expense. 
They have often failed in morality, and morality is 
indispensable. And they have been punished for their 
failure, as the Puritan has been rewarded for his per- 
formance. They have been punished wherein they 
erred ; but their ideal of beauty, of SAveetness and light, 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 27 

and a human nature complete on all its sides, remains 
the true ideal of perfection still ; just as the Puritan's 
ideal of jjerfection remains narrow and inadequate, 
although for what he did well he has been richly re- 
warded. Notwithstanding the mighty results of the 
Pilgrim Fathers' voyage, they and their standard of 
perfection are rightly judged when we figure to our- 
selves Shakespeare or Virgil, — souls in whom sweet- 
ness and light, and all that in human nature is most 
humane, were eminent, — accompanying them on their 
voyage, and think what intolerable company Shake- 
speare and Virgil would have found them ! In the 
same Avay let us judge the religious organizations which 
we see all around us. Do not let us deny the good and 
the happiness which they have accomplished; but do 
not fail to let us see clearly that their idea of human 
perfection is narrow and inadequate, and that the 
Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the 
Protestant religion will never bring humanity to its 
true goal. As I said with regard to wealth: Let us 
look at the life of those who live in and for it, — so 
I say with regard to the religious organizations. Look 
at the life imaged in such a newspaper as the Noncon- 
formist — a life of jealousy of the Establishment, dis- 
putes, tea-meetings, openings of chapels, sermons ; and 
then think of it as an ideal of a human life completing 
itself on all sides, and aspiring with all its organs after 
sweetness, light, and x^erfection ! 



28 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

Another newspaper, representing, like tlie Nonconform- 
ist, one of the religious organizations of this country, 
was a short time ago giving an account of the crowd at 
Epsom on the Derby day, and of all the vice and hid- 
eousness which was to be seen in that crowd ; and then 
the writer turned suddenly round upon Professor Hux- 
ley, and asked him how he proposed to cure all this vice 
and hideousness without religion. I confess I felt dis- 
posed to ask the asker this question : And how do you 
propose to cure it Avith such a religion as yours ? How 
is the ideal of a life so unlovely, so unattractive, so in- 
complete, so narrow, so far removed from a true and sat- 
isfying ideal of human perfection, as is the life of your 
religious organization as you yourself reflect it, to con- 
quer and transform all this vice and hideousness ? In- 
deed, the strongest plea for the study of perfection as 
pursued by culture, the clearest proof of the actual 
inadequacy of the idea of perfection held by the reli- 
gious organizations, — expressing, as I have said, the 
most widespread effort which the human race has yet 
made after perfection, — is to be found in the state of 
our life and society with these in possession of it, and 
having been in possession of it I know not how many 
hundred years. We are all of us included in some reli- 
gious organization or other ; we all call ourselves, in the 
sublime and aspiring language of religion which I have 
before noticed, children of God. Children of God, — it 



SWEETNESS AND LIGUT. 29 

is au immense pretension ! — and liow are we to justify 
it ? By the works which we do, and the words which 
we speak. And the work which we collective children 
of God do, our grand centre of life, our citf/ which we 
have builded for us to dwell in, is London ! London, 
with its unutterable external hideousness, and with its 
internal canker of 2)u^iice egestas, pvivatwi opulentia, — . 
to use the Avords which Sallust puts into Cato's mouth 
about Kome, — unequalled in the world ! The word, 
again, which we children of God speak, the voice which 
most hits our collective thought, the newspaper with the 
largest circulation in England, nay, with the largest cir- 
culation in the whole Avorld, is the Dally Teler/raph ! I 
say that when our religious organizations, — which I ad- 
mit to express the most considerable effort after perfec. 
tion that our race has yet made, — land us in no better 
result than this, it is high time to examine carefully 
their idea of perfection, to see whether it does not leave 
out of account sides and forces of human nature whioli 
we might turn to great use; whether it Avould not be 
more operative if it were more complete. And I say 
that the English reliance on our religious organizations, 
and on their ideas of human perfection just as they 
stand, is like our reliance on freedom, on muscular 
Christianity, on population, on coal, on wealth, — mere 
belief in machinery, and unfruitful; and that it is whole- 
somely counteracted by culture, bent on seeing things as 



30 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

they are, and on drawing the human race onwards to a 
more complete, a harmonious perfection. 

Culture, however, shows its single-minded love of per- 
fection, its desire simply to make reason and the will of 
God prevail, its freedom from fanaticism, by its attitude 
towards all this machinery, even while it insists that 
it is machinery. Fanatics, seeing the mischief men 
do themselves by their blind belief in some machinery 
or other, — whether it is wealth and industrialism, or 
whether it is the cultivation of bodily strength and 
activity, or whether it is a political organization, or 
whether it is a religious organization, — oppose with 
might and main the tendency to this or that political 
and religious organization, or to games and athletic ex- 
ercises, or to wealth and industrialism, and try violently 
to stop it. But the flexibility which sweetness and 
light give, and which is one of the rewards of culture 
pursued in good faith, enables a man to see that a ten- 
dency may be necessary, and even, as a preparation for 
something in the future, salutary, and yet that the gen- 
erations or individuals who obey this tendency are sacri- 
ficed to it, that they fall short of the hope of perfection 
by following it ; and that its mischiefs are to be criti- 
cised, lest it should take too firm a hold, and last after 
it has served its purpose. 

Mr. Gladstone well pointed out, in a speech at Paris, 
— and others have pointed out the same thing, — how 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 31 

necessary is the present great movement towards wealth 
and mdustrialism, in order to hay broad foundations of 
material well-being for the society of the future. The 
worst of these justifications is, that they are generally 
addressed to the very people engaged, body and soul, in 
the movement in question ; at all events, that they are 
always seized with the greatest avidity by these people, 
and taken by them as quite justifying their life ; and 
that thus they tend to harden them in their sins. Now, 
culture admits the necessity of the movement towards 
fortune-making and exaggerated industrialism, readily 
allows that the future may derive benefit from it ; but 
insists, at the same time, that the passing generations 
of industrialists — forming, for the most part, the stout 
main body of Philistinism — are sacrificed to it. In 
the same way, the result of all the games and sports 
which occupy the passing generation of boys and young 
men may be the establishment of a better and sounder 
physical type for the future to work with. Culture 
does not set itself against the games and sports ; it con- 
gratulates the future, and hopes it will make a good use 
of its improved physical basis ; but it points out that 
our passing generation of boys and young men is, mean- 
time, sacrificed. Puritanism was perhaps necessary to 
develop the moral fibre of the English race, Koncon- 
formity to break the yoke of ecclesiastical domination 
over men's minds, and to prepare the way for freedom 



32 SWEETNESS AND LIGUT. 

of thought in the distant future ; still, culture points 
out that the harmonious perfection of generations of 
Puritans and Nonconformists has been, in consequence, 
sacrificed. Freedom of speech may be necessary for 
the society of the future, but the young lions of the 
Daily Telegrajjh in the meanwhile are sacrificed. A 
voice for every man in his country's government may be 
necessary for the society of the future, but meanwhile 
Mr. Beales and Mr. Bradlaugh are sacrificed. 

Oxford, the Oxford of the past, has many faults ; and 
she has heavily paid for them in defeat, in isolation, in 
want of hold upon the modern world. Yet we in 
Oxford, brought up amidst the beauty and sweetness 
of that beautiful place, have not failed to seize one 
truth — the truth that beauty and sweetness are essen- 
tial characters of a complete human perfection. When 
I insist on this, I am all in the faith and tradition of 
Oxford. I say boldly that this our sentiment for beauty 
and sweetness, our sentiment against hideousness and 
rawness, has been at the bottom of our attachment to so 
many beaten causes, of our opposition to so many trium- 
phant movements. And the sentiment is true, and has 
never been wholly defeated, and has shown its power 
even in its defeat. We have not won our political bat- 
tles, we have not carried our main points, we have not 
stopped our adversaries' advance, we have not marched 
victoriously with the modern world 5 but we have told 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 83 

silently upon the mind of the country, we have ]orepared 
currents of feeling which sap our adversaries' position 
when it seems gained, we have kept up our own com- 
munications with the future. Look at the course of the 
great movement which shook Oxford to its centre some 
thirty years ago ! It was directed, as any one who 
reads Dr. Newman's " Apology " may see, against what 
in one word may be called " Liberalism." Liberalism 
prevailed ; it was the appointed force to do the work of 
the hour ; it was necessary, it was inevitable that it 
should prevail. The Oxford movement was broken, it 
failed 5 our wrecks are scattered on every shore : — 

Qum reglo in terris nostri non plena laboris ? 

But what was it, this liberalism, as Dr. Newman saw it, 
and as it really broke the Oxford movement ? It was 
the great middle-class liberalism, which had for the 
cardinal points of its belief the Eeform Bill of 1832, 
and local self-government, in politics; in the social 
sphere, free-trade, unrestricted competition, and the 
making of large industrial fortunes 5 in the religious 
sphere, the Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism 
of the Protestant religion. I do not say that other and 
more intelligent forces than this were not opposed to 
the Oxford movement ; but this was the force which 
really beat it ; this was the force which Dr. Newman 
felt himself fighting with ; this was the force which 



34 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

till only the other day seemed to be the paramount force 
in this country, and to be in possession of the future ; 
this was the force whose achievements fill Mr. Lowe 
with such inexpressible admiration, and whose rule he 
was so horror-struck to see threatened. And where is 
this great force of Philistinism now ? It is thrust into 
the second rank, it is become a power of yesterday, it 
has lost the future. A new power has suddenly ap- 
peared, a power Avhich it is impossible yet to judge 
fully, but which is certainly a Avholly different force 
from middle-class liberalism — different in its cardinal 
points of belief, different in its tendencies in every 
sphere. It loves and admires neither the legislation of 
middle-class Parliaments, nor the local self-government 
of middle-class vestries, nor the unrestricted competition 
of middle-class industrialists, nor the dissidence of mid- 
dle-class Dissent and the Protestantism of middle-class 
Protestant religion. I am not now praising this new 
force, or saying that its own ideals are better ; all I say 
is, that they are wholly different. And who will esti- 
mate how much the currents of feeling created by Dr. 
Newman's movements, the keen desire for beauty and 
sweetness which it nourished, the deep aversion it man- 
ifested to the hardness and vulgarity of middle-class 
liberalism, the strong light it turned on the hideous and 
grotesque illusions of middle-class Protestantism — who 
will estimate how much all these contributed to swell 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 35 

the tide of secret dissatisfaction which has mined the 
ground under self-confident liberalism of the last thirty 
years, and has prepared the way for its sudden collapse 
and supersession ? It is in this manner that the senti- 
ment of Oxford for beauty and sweetness conquers, and 
in this manner long may it continue to conquer ! 

In this manner it works to the same end as culture, 
and there is plenty of work for it yet to do. I have 
said that the new and more democratic force which is 
now superseding our old middle-class liberalism cannot 
yet be rightly judged. It has its main tendencies still 
to form. We hear promises of its giving us adminis- 
trative reform, law reform, reform of education, and I 
know not what ; but those promises come rather from 
its advocates, wishing to make a good plea for it and to 
justify it for superseding middle-class liberalism, than 
from clear tendencies Avhich it has itself yet developed. 
But meanwhile it has plenty of well-intentioned friends 
against whom culture may with advantage continue to 
uphold steadily its ideal of human perfection ; that this 
is «?^ inivard spiritual activity, having for its characters 
increased siveetness, increased light, increased life, in- 
creased sympathy. Mr, Bright, who has a foot in both 
worlds, the Avorld of middle-class liberalism and the 
world of democracy, but who brings most of his ideas 
from the world of middle-class liberalism in which he 
was bred, always inclines to inculcate that faith in ma- 



36 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

chinery to which, as we have seen, Englishmen are so 
prone, and which has been the bane of middle-class lib- 
eralism. He complains with a sorrowful indignation of 
people who " appear to have no proper estimate of the 
value of the franchise ; '^ he leads his disciples to be- 
lieve, — what the Englishman is always too ready to 
believe, — that the having a vote, like the having a large 
family, or a large business, or large muscles, has in 
itself some edifying and perfecting effect upon human 
nature. Or else he cries out to the democracy, — " the 
men," as he calls them, " uj^on whose shoulders the 
greatness of England rests,*' — he cries out to them : 
" See what you have done ! I look over this country 
and see the cities joii have built, the railroads you have 
made, the manufactures you have produced, the cargoes 
which freight the ships of the greatest mercantile navy 
the world has ever seen ! I see that you have converted 
by your labors what was once a wilderness, these islands, 
into a fruitful garden; I know that you have created 
this wealth, and are a nation whose name is a word of 
power throughout all the world." Why, this is just the 
very style of laudation with which Mr. Eoebuck or Mr. 
Lowe debauches the minds of the middle classes, and 
makes such Philistines of them. It is the same fashion 
of teaching a man to value himself not on what he is, 
not on his progress in sweetness and light, but on the 
number of the railroads he has constructed, or the big- 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 37 

ness of the to.bernacle he has built. Only the middle 
classes are told they have done it all Avith their energy, 
self-reliance, and capital, and the democracy are told 
they have done it all with their hands and sinews. But 
teaching the democracy to put its trust in achievements 
of this time is merely training them to be Philistines 
to take tlie place of the Philistines whom they are su- 
perseding; and they, too, like the middle class, will be 
encouraged to sit down at the banquet of the future with- 
out having on a wedding garment, and nothing excellent 
can then come from them. Those who know their beset- 
ting faults, those who have watched them and listened 
to them, or those who will read the instructive account 
recently given of them by one of themselves, the Joicr- 
neyman Engineer, wdll agree that the idea which culture 
sets before us of perfection, — an increased spiritual ac- 
tivity, having for its characters increased sweetness, 
increased light, increased life, increased sympathy, — is 
an idea which the new democracy needs far more than 
the idea of the blessedness of the franchise, or the won- 
derfulness of its own industrial performances. 

Other well-meaning friends of this new power are for 
leading it, not in the old ruts of middle-class Philistin- 
ism, but in ways which are naturally alluring to the feet 
of democracy, though in this country they are novel 
und untried ways. I may call them the ways of Jacob- 
inism. Violent indignation with the past, abstract sys- 



88 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

terns of renovation applied wholesale, a new doctrine 
drawn up in black and white for elaborating down to 
the very smallest details a rational society for the 
future, — these are the ways of Jacobinism. Mr. 
Frederic Harrison and other disciples of Comte — one 
of them, Mr. Congreve, is an old friend of mine, and I 
am glad to have an opportunity of publicly expressing 
my respect , for his talents and character — are among 
the friends of democracy who are for leading it in paths 
of this kind. Mr. Frederic Harrison is very hostile to 
culture, and from a natural enough motive ; for culture 
is the eternal opponent of the two things which are the 
signal marks of Jacobinism, — its fierceness, and its 
addiction to an abstract system. Culture is always 
assigning to system-makers and systems a smaller share 
in the bent of human destiny than their friends like. 
A current in people's minds set towards new ideas ; 
people are dissatisfied with their old narrow stock of 
Philistine ideas, Anglo-Saxon ideas, or any other ; and 
some man, some Bentham or Comte, who has the real 
merit of having early and strongly felt and helped the 
new current, but who brings plenty of narrowness and 
mistakes of his own into his feeling and help of it, is 
credited with being the author of the whole current, the 
fit person to be intrusted with its regulation and to 
guide the human race. 

The excellent German historian of the mythology of 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 89 

Kome, Preller, relating the introduction at Eome under 
the Tarquins of the worship of Apollo, the god of light, 
healing, and reconciliation, will have us observe that it 
was not so much the Tarquins who brought to Eome 
the new worship of Apollo, as a current in the mind 
of the Eoman people which set powerfully at that time 
towards a new worship of this kind, and away from the 
old run of Latin and Sabine religious ideas. In a simi- 
lar way, culture directs our attention to the natural 
current there is in human affairs, and to its continual 
working, and will not let us rivet our faith upon any 
one man and his doings. It makes us see not only his 
good side, but also how much in him was of necessity 
limited and transient ; nay, it even feels a pleasure, a 
sense of an increased freedom and of an ampler future, 
in so doing. 

I remember, when I Avas under the influence of a 
mind to which I feel the greatest obligations, the mind 
of a man who was the very incarnation of sanity and 
clear sense, a man the most considerable, it seems to me, 
whom America has yet produced, — Benjamin Franklin, 
— I remember the relief with which, after long feeling 
the sway of Franklin's imperturbable common-sense, I 
came upon a project of his for a new version of the 
Book of Job, to replace the old version, the style of 
which, says Franklin, has become obsolete, and thence 
less agreeable. " I give," he continues, " a few verses, 



40 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

wMcli may serve as a sample of tlie kind of version I 
would recommend." We all recollect the famous verse 
in our translation, " Then Satan answered the Lord, and 
said : Doth Job fear God for naught ? '^ Franklin 
makes this : " Does- your majesty imagine that Job's 
good conduct is the effect of personal attachment and 
affection ? " I v/ell remember how, Avhen first I read 
that, I drew a deep breath of relief, and said to myself : 
" After all, there is a stretch of humanity beyond 
Eranklin's victorious- good sense ! " So, after hearing 
Bentham cried loudly up as the renovator of modern 
society, and Bentham's mind and ideas proposed as the 
rulers of our future, I open the ^' Deontology." There 
I read : '^ While Xenophon was writing his history, and 
Euclid teaching geometry, Socrates and Plato were talk- 
ing nonsense under pretence of talking wisdom and 
morality. This morality of theirs consisted in vv^ords : 
this wisdom of theirs was the denial of matters known 
to every man's experience.'^ From the moment of read- 
ing that, I am delivered from bondage of Bentham ! the 
fanaticism of his adherents can touch me no longer. 
I feel the inadequacy of his mind and ideas for supply- 
ing the rule of human society, for perfection. 

Culture tends always thus to deal with the men of a 
system, of disciples, of a school ; with men like Comte, 
or the late Mr. Buckle, or Mr. Mill. However much it 
may iind to admire in these personages, or in some of 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 41 

them^ it nevertheless remembers the text : ''- Be not ye 
called Eabbi ! " and it soon passes on from any Eabbi. 
But Jacobinism loves a Babbi ; it does not want to pass 
on from its Kabbi in pursuit of a future and still un- 
reached perfection ; it wants its Kabbi and his ideas to 
stand for perfection, that they may with the more au- 
thority recast the world ; and for Jacobinism, therefore, 
culture — eternally passing onwards and seeking ■ — ■ is 
an impertinence and an offence. But culture, just be- 
cause it resists this tendency of Jacobinism to impose on 
us a man with limitations and errors of his own along 
with the true ideas of which he is the organ, really does 
the world and Jacobinism itself a service. 

So too, Jacobinism, in its fierce hatred of the past, 
and of those whom it makes liable for the sins of the 
past, cannot away with the inexhaustible indulgences 
proper to culture, the consideration of circumstances, 
the severe judgment of actions joined to the merciful 
judgment of j)ersons. " The man of culture is in poli- 
tics,'^ cries Mr. Frederic Harrison, " one of the poorest 
mortals alive ! " Mr. Frederic Harrison wants to be 
doing business, and he complains that the man of cul- 
ture stops him with a '' turn for small faultfinding, love 
of selfish ease, and indecision in action." Of what use 
is culture, he asks, except for " a critic of new books or 
a professor of belles-lettres " ? Why, it is of use, because, 
in presence of the fierce exasperation which breathes, or 



42 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

rather, I may say, hisses through the whole production 
ill which Mr. Frederic Harrison asks that question, it 
reminds us that the perfection of human nature is sweet- 
ness and light. It is of use, because, like religion, — 
that other effort after perfection, — it testifies that, 
where bitter envying and strife are, there is confusion 
and every evil work. 

The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweet- 
ness and light. He who works for sweetness and light 
works to make reason and the will of God prevail. He 
who works for machinery, he who works for hatred, 
works only for confusion. Culture looks beyond machin- 
ery, culture hates hatred ; culture has one great passion, 
the passion for sweetness and light. It has one even yet 
greater ! — the passion for making them 2^revail. It is not 
satisfied till we all come to a perfect man ; it knows that 
the sweetness and light of the few must be imperfect until 
the raw and unkindled masses of humanity are touched 
with sweetness and light. If I have not shrunk from 
saying that we must work for sweetness and light, so 
neither have I shrunk from saying that we must have a 
broad basis, must have sweetness and light for as many 
as possible. Again and again I have insisted how those 
are the happy moments of humanity, how those are the 
marking epochs of a people's life, how those are the 
flowering times for literature and art, and all the crea- 
tive x^ower of genius, when there is a 7iatio7ial glow of 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 43 

life and thought, when the whole of society is in the 
fullest measure permeated by thought, sensible to beauty, 
intelligent and alive. Only it must be real thought and 
real beauty, real sweetness and real light. Plenty of 
people Avill try to give the masses, as they call them, an 
intellectual food prepared and adapted in the way they 
think proper for the actual condition of the masses. 
The ordinary popular literature is an example of this 
way of working on the masses. Plenty of people will 
try to indoctrinate the masses with the set of ideas and 
judgments constituting the creed of their own profession 
or party. Our religious and political organizations give 
an example of this Avay of working on the masses. I 
condemn neither way ; but culture works differently. It 
does not try to teach down to the level of inferior classes ; 
it does not try to win them for this or that sect of its 
own, with ready-made judgments and watchwords. It 
seeks to do away with classes ; to make the best that 
has been thought and known in the world current every- 
where ; to make all men live in an atmosphere of sweet- 
ness and light, where they may use ideas, as it uses them 
itself, freely, — nourished, and not bound by them. 

This is the social idea ; and the men of culture are 
the true apostles of equality. The great men of culture 
are those who have had a passion for diffusing, for 
making prevail, for carrying from one end of society to 
the other, the best knowledge, the best ideas of their 



44 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 

time ; who have labored to divest knowledge of all 
that was harsh, uncouth, difficult, abstract, professional, 
exclusive ; to humanize it, to make it efficient outside 
the clique of the cultivated and learned, yet still remain- 
ing the best knowledge and thought of the time, and 
a true source, therefore, of sweetness and light. Such a 
man was Abelard in the Middle Ages, in spite of all his 
imperfections ; and thence the boundless emotion and 
enthusiasm which Abelard excited. Such were Lessing 
and Herder in Germany, at the end of the last century ; 
and their services to Germany were in this way ines- 
timably precious. Generations will pass, and literary 
monuments will accumulate, and works far more perfect 
than the works of Lessing and Herder will be produced 
in Germany ; and yet the names of these two men will 
fill a German with a reverence and enthusiasm such 
as the names of the most gifted masters will hardly 
awaken. And why ? Because they humanized knowl- 
edge; because they broadened the basis of life and 
intelligence; because they worked powerfully to diffuse 
SAveetness and light, to make reason and the will of 
God prevail. With St. Augustine they said : " Let us 
not leave thee alone to make in the secret of thy knowl- 
edge, as thou didst before the creation of the firmament, 
the division of light from darkness ; let the children of 
thy spirit, placed in their firmament, make their light 
shine upon the earth, mark the division of night and 



SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 45 

day, and announce the revolution of the times ; for the 
okl order is passed, and the new arises ; the night is 
spent, the day is come forth 5 and thou shalt crown the 
year with thy blessing, when thou shalt send forth 
laborers into the harvest sown by other hands than 
theirs ; when thou shalt send forth new laborers to ncAV 
seed-times, whereof the harvest shall not be yet." 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

nil III 




014 387 176 9 # 




